~:egeflts (Continued from Page 4) during the public comments of the Thursday session, another issue of strong concern came up-that of the Graduate Employees Organization 4GEO). Acting President Marty Bombyk called for the University to drop its court case against GEO. The Univer- sity contends the teaching assistants in. the' union are not allowed to bargain collectively with the University because they are students instead of employees. On the following Friday, the Board rejected a move to begin construction of a consolidated dining complex for the Hill dorms. Several of the regents based their opposition on the belief that the complex would be inconvenient and damage the identity of each separate dorm.0 In the December meetings, the final ones under the leadership of Robben Fleming, the Board tabled until January a resolution calling for renovations in the Michigan Union. Also, the group approved a final site for the Univrsity's $254 million hospital renovation project. THE REGENTS made two landmark decisions in January. First, they decided to turn the control of the Union to the Office for Student Services to make the Union more student oriented. This move included transforming most of the hotel space in the Union to dor- mitory rooms. At the same meeting, the Board voted to allow hospital administrtators to submit a certificate of need for the $254 million Hospital Replacement Project. If the certificate of need is accepted by the state, the project will be the most costly single University expenditure. FIFTEEN ELDERLY citizens and 5 students flooded the Regents Room for the February meeting. The elderly came to complain about space a geriatric was using which had been recently allocated to a consolidation unit. Meanwhile, the students present at the meeting spoke again during public comments in favor of tenure for Samoff. The Regents, in February, also raised dormitory fees an average of 6.9 per cent for next year, or $113.31 per student. In the Regents most controversial gathering this past school year, the Board in March was stifled by protesters during both days until they obtained a court order allowing them to meet behind closed doors. ._More than 200 demonstrators, shouting chants and accusations, were demanding that the issue of South African divestitire be placed on the April agenda. When the request was The Michigan Daily-Sunday, April 15, 1979-Page 5 denied, the spectators disrupted the meeting. This is where the drama continues this week. In the interim, the Univer- sity has obtained a court judgment allowing the Board to move its meeting if it is disrupted, barring only the demonstrators at the recoivened meeting.. Those among the protesters from the last meeting have already in- dicated they will gather another large and vocal crowd for the April meeting. The year is not over yet. MSA (Continued fr.mPage 4) ITEM: MSA successfully pushed pressure on the Regents to grant the students more input into the process to select a permanent successor for for- mer University President Robben Fleming. The Board had originally refused to give the student advisory committee equal interviewing rights, but that decision was overturned in its February meetings. Item: The Assembly lobbied exten- sively to urge the Regents to turn over the Michigan Union to students through the Office of Student Services. The Regents finally consented, beginning a process that will eventually lead to a more student-oriented Union. While its true that the election's mishaps may hinder the Assembly's ef- forts to give students more of a role in the University decision-making process, it is clear that the Assembly scored many successes this year. important decisions were delayed for several months. In fact, the conditions became so pitiful that at their last meeting in April, faculty members voted to abolish quorum altogether and conduct formal proceedings with whomever shows up. It is also predic- table to note that even at this meeting, they failed to achieve the necessary quorum to vote on the issue, and were forced into taking a recess to convince additional faculty members to come to the meeting. The faculty did, however, make some decisions the past year worthy of men- tion. They approved amendments to the Manual of Procedures for the LSA Academic judiciary, which were favorable to students in appealing all cases of academic dishonesty. They held lengthy discussion which analyzed the feasibility of changes to the academic calendar, and stiffened the criteria for students receiving academic distinction honors upon graduation. However, one does not need great insight to see that these decisions represent minor issues. This may be the key to understanding the problem of faculty apathy. "It is obvious," as one faculty mem- ber put it, "that if we were presented with issues of importance, like faculty salaries or problems with tenure, we would come in full force to these meetings." The administrative struc- ture of LSA is one which gives most of the power to the Executive Committee - made up of six faculty members and a number of deans - and to the Dean, Billy Frye. The faculty rarely decides the issues which concern them the, most, and until this arrangement of power is changed, LSA faculty meetings will probably be sparsely at- tended. EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING When the LSA Executive Committee advised the Curriculum Committee to make a review of Experiential Lear- ning - learning which takes place out- side the classroom and focuses on community projects or research - several things occurred. The Curriculum Committee made certain revisions in the guidelines for experien- tial courses which would encourage the increased emphasis upon subjects directly related to the academic discipline - additional readings, more formal discussions between instructors and students, etc. The committee, which has nine faculty members and three students, decided not to make major revisions in specific programs. However, the Executive Committee decided on its own to force such changes in one of the most popular and well-respected programs on campus - Project Outreach. Outreach projects, which are super- vised almost entirely by un- dergraduates who have taken the cour- se before, work with various com- munity agencies and are concerned with personal communications with people involved in prison reform, tenant-landlord disputes, hospital relations, and aiding the elderly. Many students, and some faculty members, have said that such experiences are much more valuable than traditional classroom learning, and that by its very meaning are quite different. However, the Executive Committee felt that because Outreach did not utilize enough Teaching Assistants and faculty members in its sections, it was not worthy of credit. Therefore, it has asked the Psychology Department to increase faculty supervision in the program, and has even recommended a reduction in the number of credits (12) which a student can currently take in the program. The fact that such changes are taking place in Outreach, combined with the review of all experiential learning' in it- self, is an indication of faculty and ad- ministrative concern with "intellectual freedom." In a sense, it is a call for a return to structured forms of education, without any allowance for true creativity. This has also been men- tioned as a problem in the new English composition program at the University. While the University has said the writing ability of students is on the decline, there has really been little proof of that suggestion. In addition, some TAs are upset about the new requirements because they say they do not allow them to structure the course in an individualized fashion, thus restricting creative freedom in the classroom. flow, the city would be forced to tran- sport its garbage to private landfills, where it would be financially at the mercy of the owners. The shredder will also open up the possibility of a city-wide recycling program, as the machine is designed to weed out metal from the rest of the refuse.I THE PUNCH-CARD voting system, introduced in the February primary election, was blasted from all sides following the April election, at the last Council meeting of the season. Com- plicatons had arisen with the vote- counting, and canvassers had finished their work around midnight, counting ballots with magnifying glasses. According to City Clerk Al Vollbrecht, part of the reason for the delay lay in the fact that the votes were all counted at one central place-the city Armory-rather than at the in- dividual polling places. Local republicans had requested the votes be tallied at the Armory so that monitors could be on hand to observe the process. This month's elections saw the rein- statement of last year's Council, all the. incumbents being re-elected: So barring any such major frustrations as the punchcard system complications, it looks as though the flavor of Council debate during the next two years will be not much different than that of the past 12 months. began its task for catching up to the faculty and alumni groups. THE FORMAL selection process began on February 15 when the student advisory committee submitted its needs of the University statement to the Regents. A pool of approximately 250 nominees had been collected since Sep- tember; for the first time, all three groups turned their attention to selec- ting a University president from among those nominees. On February 16 the advisory groups won their most significant concession since the beginning of the search: the Regents unanimously passed a resolution allowing representatives of the three advisory panels to interview the final candidates for president along with an unspecified number of Regents. The Board stated it hoped the final group would be "less than eight per- sons:" In the end, the long-sought right to in- terview the final eight candidates was won less because of the boycott, than because of careful negotiation between student committee members and the Regents. Once the members committed themselves to be involved in the process, they were careful to build a relationship of trust and cooperation with the Regents. And when the Regen- ts became convinced that the student committee was ready to participate in good faith, they granted the inter- viewing rights. BUT PART OF establishing that trust meant a commitment to secrecy by the students. While that commitment disturbed many of the group's mem- bers, it was a necessary concession to insure that the Regents would trust the committee. Nevertheless, because of the Regents' fear that publicity about candidates will cause the best ones to withdraw, the student committee is still committed to secretly interviewing the final candidates for the position. That commitment is a disservice to the students they are representing in the search. The presidential selection process- with fewer than fifty nominees remaining-is nearing its final stages. It is currently unclear when the inter- viewing process will begin; it is equally "unclear when the final decision will be made. The only formal prediction made during the process was by Regent David Laro (R-Flint), who was vir- tually certain the choice would not be made in April and could continue until July. More probable is that the selec- tion will be made in June; it could be made in May. But regardless of whoever is ultimately chosen to lead the Univer- sity in the 1980's, one fact will emerge from the search for a president: significant decisions are still the per- sonal domain of the eight University tegents. And that situation will con- tinue in the near future. .pres. Academcs, (Continued from Page 4) troversy is likely to continue for many years, because it is one of the only ways the students can get input into the tenure process. Finally, the fact that students are not directly involved in tenure decisions -, they do not serve on executive commit- tees in most colleges, nor do they have input into department decisions - has been the focus of recent attempts by at least one organization to push for student positions on important commit- tees. The Samoff Student Support Committee has decided -to examine a broader scope of tenure issues and plan to pursue its position more vehemently in the fall. LSA FACULTY One only has to look at the behavior of the LSA faculty this past year to find a blatant example of inaction. Although it is not historically a new problem, nor is it unique to unversities across the coun- try, the LSA faculty meetings were so sparsely attended all year, that many cirty (Continued from Page 4) family zoning are based on population density, not partisan leanings. And Democratic Councilman Ken Latta said in response to Trowbridge's comments, "People who move into apartments now are middle-income families that cannot afford houses. Many of those families are conser- vative, and not those that are poorer and would traditionally vote Democratic." THE MAYOR'S assessment that the two parties work well together on Council is not totally unfounded, however, Council members have collaborated on such issues as the solid waste shredder facility and have denounced together such projects as the new punch-card voting system. The $2,825,000 shredder, which was placed on the April ballot and sub- sequently approved by the voters, will prolong the life of the city's near- overflowing landfill by compressing the garbage deposited there. Preservation of the present landfill will insure the city independence in the area of solid waste disposal. Should the dump over- Search (Continued from Page 4) teeing that the three groups would have access to candidates nominated by the Regents. But point 12 of the document stressed that the "Advisory Commit- tees are not to conduct any interviews. This is the prerogative of the Regents' Selection Committee alone." WHile, the faculty and alumni (a group that Chairman Sam Krugliak would later call "completely the ser- vants of the Regents") panels con- tinued to organize their search commit- tees, MSA voted on October 24 to boycott the presidential ,selection process because they were denied in- terviewing rights. It was not until December 12 that they would vote to change that decision. On that day, MSA voted to participate in the selection process. After the student committee, co-chaired by Jeff Supowit, Bridget Scholl and Olivia Wesley, assembled, it passed a resolution stating that it would "recommend to MSA the recall of our committee" if "we perceive a lack of meaningful student participation in the selection process, specifically inadequate access to candidates, in- cluding interviewing." The group then tinue in the near future. pr. 17 8 I p.m. Power Center WITH TAJ MAHAL TE E GOOD HOURS: MON - SAT: 10-b 'SUN; 12-8 H R:ON-SAT". 10-6 9SUv v n:,1Rf - v